


Too Little, Too L8

by sn34k1 (dastardlymeme)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Humanstuck, Multi, johnvris but platonic only sorry, same with vriskat more than likely though i ship it hella hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-12 19:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2122095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dastardlymeme/pseuds/sn34k1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She cannot, for the life of her, figure out what her problem is, but Vriska's sure there's a lot of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Little, Too L8

A child sits in a room, hands cupped and eyes narrowed as she squints through the darkness. She is enraptured by the tiny eight legged creature in her hands. Her own surname is related to its bite, her first name a derivative of something that's been explained to her countless times over, but as curious as Vriska Serket is, she's never paid much attention. Vriska prods the poor arachnid with a pale and Band-Aid clad finger, whispers to it as though she's talking to an old friend. It's late at night, her sister is fast asleep and her "Mother" is in the other room, working, trusting the older children to watch over the little ones.

It has become a routine for Vriska to stay awake until the wee hours. Feigning sleep until Aranea is well and truly dead to the world, and the older Serket will remain as such until the bright morning sunlight filters through the ancient and moth eaten lace curtains that seemingly remain forever unmoved in front of the grimy old bay window in the living room.

They have no bedroom of their own, the Serket sisters, not here. They can't afford to be given a bedroom of their own. Their biological mother has been incarcerated for the past two years, for reasons Vriska won't know until she reaches her early teens. That's when she will do a dramatic little leap off the brink of stability and begin her descent to her infamous and notorious state of being, where she cares naught for anyone but herself, because someone has to do it.

 

Karkat and his brother Kankri lie on the sofa, fast asleep. Karkat's growling and whining under his breath like a dog as he suffers his way through another nightmare that he won't find blessed reprieve from 'til morning, and Kankri remains curled up on the opposite side, talking softly in his sleep. Even as he slumbers, Kankri somehow still retains his informative yet almost pompous tone.

Aranea lies on a flat mattress on the ground, covered by a thin green sheet because it's far too hot to sleep with anything thicker on top. Vriska has even taken to sleeping without any covering save for a ribbed cotton tank and a pair of baggy black shorts that once belonged to Aranea.

 

It’s always a question of money, time and circumstance, isn’t it?

Never enough money but they’ve always got clothes, food, bus money and neatly wrapped lunches.

Never enough time but they always manage to get to their after-school and weekend obligations, always manage to do their homework, and the house is always in a somewhat clean state.

Never the right circumstances, though. And that’s that.

They scrape by. Surviving, not Living. Unless it’s late, because Vriska knows that’s when things really come to life.

 

Perhaps she should go to bed, Vriska contemplates this for a while, still playing with the spider as she mulls the seemingly life altering decision of whether or not she should go to bed yet. It’s Friday, and Vriska hasn’t yet joined the track team as she soon will, so there’s no meet for her to attend. She’s not taken up a paper route, either, not yet. Nor has Vriska begun yearbook club. This will all come later.

“One day, Peter, we’re gonna get outta here. And you’re comin’ with me.” The eight year old whispers, her voice small and childish, catching on the gap between her front teeth. She’ll go to middle school with braces and suffer for it.

 

The spider finally makes a rapid escape, scurrying off Vriska’s hand and down her wrist, to freedom. It will die soon enough and it most definitely won’t Get Outta Here with Vriska. She decides now is a good time to finally go to sleep, and she will dream of seeing her mother—her _real_ mother—again. Once that dream is done, she will dream of being a pirate, because no one can make you help tidy up the living room when you’re a mighty, fierce pirate. No one can make you do anything you don’t want to, when you’re a pirate.

She settles in, on the mattress beside Aranea, drifting to sleep after a strenuous effort of tossing and turning atop a linty sheet. The warm breeze of midnight in summer filters through the screen on the window, and the old lace curtains finally begin to blow with it. Vriska falls asleep watching them, those old lace curtains. One day, she thinks, I’ll have _way_ better curtains than that!

 

She doesn’t Get Out. One Day never comes. Vriska Grows Up, and she despises it.

 

 

 


End file.
